LONDON’S TWITTER LANGUAGES.

A very nice visualization of the language communities of London, as revealed by Twitter:

English tweets (grey) dominate (unsurprisingly) and they provide crisp outlines to roads and train lines as people tweet on the move. Towards the north, more Turkish tweets (blue) appear, Arabic tweets (green) are most common around Edgware Road and there are pockets of Russian tweets (pink) in parts of central London. The geography of the French tweets (red) is perhaps most surprising as they appear to exist in high density pockets around the centre and don’t stand out in South Kensington (an area with the Institut Francais, a French High School and the French Embassy). It may be that as a proportion of tweeters in this area they are small so they don’t stand out, or it could be that there are prolific tweeters (or bots) in the highly concentrated areas.

And don’t miss Eric Fischer’s map (at the end of the post) similarly visualising the language communities of the entire world.

Comments

The French embassy is in Knightsbridge not in South Ken. “A French High School” is well known to just about everybody in London as “the lycée” or “the lycée français”, and officially it’s Le Lycée Français Charles de Gaulle. The colours on the map are terrible choices: red (French) is way too prominent compared to the other colours & languages (no Chinese?). It’s a pretty map, but you can’t see where anything is. The should at least add the river.
Nice idea, though.

Thanks. Yes, it’s a great idea, but there’s (still?) limits to what one can make of it. It would be nice if one could turn on and off individual languages separately. On a minor note, I also wish I wouldn’t have to zoom out to check the legend.
It’s worth noting that it’s a map of tweets and not of language communities. One problem with mapping speech communities, I suppose, is that local residents are far outnumbered by tourists, at least for French and other western European languages. To sort those away, or compare one set to the other, one might e.g. separate tweets from users rweeting from abroad within one week before or after. It could easily be done much less heavy-handed, but I think that would be sufficienty precise.

That map really does raise a lot of questions. No Greek? (The Greek community in London is found in very similar places to the Turkish community, interestingly.) No South Asian languages at all?
If you want a map showing London’s ethnicities, this one is fascinating, since by using surnames at different levels of frequency it really pulls out, eg, the Chinese around Soho, the Greeks in North East London, along with the Turks, and also the Jews in North London, around Golders Green, the Irish around Kilburn and in Hammersmith, the mass of Bangladeshis in the inner East End, the large groups of Hindis, Sikhs and Pakistanis in the westernmost boroughs, and oddities such as Nigerians in Rotherhithe and Cricklewood, and Spanish in Lambeth and Edgware, Hackney and Haringey. It’s not as good as it could be: I’d be fairly certain many of the instances of Lee are Chinese, not English, of Rose are Jewish, not English, and of Martin are French.

And you can support my book habit without even spending money on me by following my Amazon links to do your shopping (if, of course, you like shopping on Amazon); I get a small percentage of every dollar spent while someone is following my referral links, and every month I get a gift certificate that allows me to buy a few books (or, if someone has bought a big-ticket item, even more). You will not only get your purchases, you will get my blessings and a karmic boost!

Favorite rave review, by Teju Cole:
"Evidence that the internet is not as idiotic as it often looks. This site is called Language Hat and it deals with many issues of a linguistic flavor. It's a beacon of attentiveness and crisp thinking, and an excellent substitute for the daily news."

From "commonbeauty"

(Cole's blog circa 2003)

All comments are copyright their original posters. Only messages signed "languagehat" are property of and attributable to languagehat.com. All other messages and opinions expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily state or reflect those of languagehat.com. Languagehat.com does not endorse any potential defamatory opinions of readers, and readers should post opinions regarding third parties at their own risk. Languagehat.com reserves the right to alter or delete any questionable material posted on this site.